Last updated at 15:23, Friday, 04 May 2012

Given the nervous state of the newspaper industry these days, a more sensitive soul might have taken offence.

“We’d like you to come and talk to the children about newspaper journalism,” the teacher said.

“Happy to,” I replied. “Flattered, in fact.”

“And dinosaurs.”

There was no point trying to hide temptation to bristle. I’d already bristled.

“The connection being...?”

“The children have been doing a project on dinosaurs, along with some reading and writing work around newspapers.”

That didn’t help. But there are times when asking too many questions can be self-defeating – not to mention demoralising. It’s a threat related to the when-in-hole principle.

Stop digging or bury yourself voluntarily. Right up to the neck.

Bristling at the end of a phone line was one thing, but pressing the point could have been hurtful.

“Are you saying my chosen career and therefore my chosen life are Jurassic?”

That would have been another point altogether. Bad question. Bad idea.

What if she’d said that had been her point exactly? What if she’d told me she’d wanted her bright children to mark the end of a long, proud but outdated era of communication by meeting one of the last in a breed?

A print journalist, hanging on perilously, by her ink-stained fingernails, to the last vestiges of a bygone age.

So I didn’t press the point; resisted asking more questions. And she didn’t elaborate.

Newlaithes Infant School, in Carlisle, was to be the venue for this grilling. By appointment. In the school hall. Interrogation driven by dinosaur and media experts ... aged four to seven.

Many a seasoned journo has wobbled on the witness stand before Lord Justice Leveson – me among them. Press barons, proprietors, ne’er-do-well hacks – and hackers – have trembled before government select committees ... some even emerging less fit for the experience.

But until any of them have been subjected to the intensity of questioning from 60 – or was it 80? – five-year-olds demanding the truth, the whole truth and nothing but satisfaction, they ain’t seen nothing yet.

“How long is a pterodactyl’s neck?”

“Erm, actually I don’t know the answer to that.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I...”

“How fast can a dinosaur run?”

“About 15 miles an hour?”

“Wrong. It’s 40.”

When in a trap of sweaty ignorance, take control before the kids apply thumbscrews and report you to the Press Complaints Commission for inaccuracy.

Swinging the subject back to one I knew better, I asked what they’d been learning about media and whether they’d reported any news lately. They had.

Unsurprisingly, it was dinosaur news. There – to my great relief – had been the connection. I breathed a touch more easily, until a pretty little thing with a pony tail flung her arms around my thighs and refused to release me until prised away by her teacher.

She lifted her pretty face and, smiling angelically, asked: “So, do you really not know how long a pterodactyl’s neck is?”

“About that long...”

I waved my arms vaguely in very approximate measurement. She slowly shook her head, looked at me pityingly and hugged my thighs again.

The police had been to school, they said. The sandpit, where three dinosaur footprints had been found, had been taped off. A rotten tooth had been taken for forensic analysis and nearby, in the woods, a nest containing dinosaur eggs had been found. Now there were sightings of waddling dino babies in the city centre, hanging around pie shops.

“So,” I summarised for ease of headline writing. “It seems we have a mummy dinosaur with one bad leg and toothache, looking for her babies.”

“She’s barged into Greggs and she’s stealing pasties!” a hot-shot young news sleuth called out.

“She must be desperate to feed her babies,” I said. “You have a major story on your hands now. After millions of years the rebirth of the dinosaur has been at Newlaithes school.”

Little Miss Thigh-hugger was still looking sorry for me, as she craned her neck to look into my face with sympathy.

“It’s not real,” she whispered.

“It’s a running story. Changing by the minute,” I enthused to the gathered press pack.

“She’s not really in Greggs. Not really,” she said. “It’s a story.”

“But a news story is real.”

She sighed heavily, rested her head on my hip and sounded weary as she asked again: “Please ... how long is a pterodactyl’s neck?”

And some you lose.

First published at 14:41, Friday, 04 May 2012
Published by http://www.cumberlandnews.co.uk